


Lines

by deedeeinfj



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 17:56:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deedeeinfj/pseuds/deedeeinfj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faramir and Éowyn return from a celebration for Aragorn</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lines

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2004

Faramir slipped quietly into bed, not wishing to disturb his sleeping wife. He curled his body around hers, pressing his lips to her shoulder. Her hair still smelled of the rich perfumes she had worn to the banquet - a celebration of the twenty-fifth year of Elessar's reign. And how beautiful she had been in her dress of velvet, with his mother's mantle around her still-slender shoulders. Her hair had been up, with thin gold tendrils falling to frame her face. Then, of course, her face, pale and beautiful with eyes that had never lost their fierceness.

He draped his arm around her and reached for her hand, surprised when her fingers found his. "I didn't mean to wake you," he murmured, pulling her closer.

"I was awake," she said. There was that in her voice which betrayed that something troubled her, a tone he knew quite well after twenty-five years. And just as he knew her, so she knew him. She must have known that he was about to ask, for she gave the answer. "Did you see her, Faramir? Skin like porcelain, perfect and smooth. She looks just as she did the day I met her."

There was no need to wonder about whom she spoke. "The queen is beautiful," he said absently. He closed his eyes and breathed in Éowyn, a familiar smell that was somehow always new. She sighed and turned onto her back, and Faramir looked down at her, touching her cheek with his knuckles.

"Do you wish you had married an elf like her?" Éowyn smiled, but Faramir saw the uncertainty in her eyes, even in the darkness of their room.

"I don't like pointed ears," he replied. He leaned closer and kissed the curve of her ear, smiling when he heard her exhale shakily. "And I love these tiny lines here," he continued, touching the corner of her lips. "They're a record of every time you've smiled."

Éowyn reached up and touched his forehead with her fingertips. "And these are here because you worry too much," she teased.

"What do you expect when you give me so many children who want to run about with swords like their mother?" he laughed. Éowyn grinned and shifted again, this time so that she faced him. She kissed his neck, and he leaned into her. "Now that we've established that I don't want the queen of Gondor, what of the king, my love?"

She drew back from him slightly, and he saw that her eyes were bright. "I wouldn't trade one minute of the freedom I find in your arms," she said slowly, "for ten years in Minas Tirith." Her hand found his again, and he felt her fingers thread through his, as if she were chaining herself to freedom. "Once a year, he makes plans to go into the wild with you or my brother. He has to plan it, Faramir. There is no longer anything in his life that is unplanned, unexpected."

As Faramir studied her earnest face, he realized at last what the connection was that had always existed between his wife and his king. Both had been looking for a kind of freedom. Éowyn had found hers; Aragorn had lost his. It had never troubled Faramir over the years to know that Aragorn loved Éowyn in a way he could never love the queen. Nor had it troubled him from the beginning to know that Éowyn loved Aragorn. Not in the way she loved her husband, for Faramir knew that Éowyn loved him just as passionately as he loved her. It was in a way that must always be distant, always unrequited - always a shadow. She loved Aragorn in the way that one might love a country or a dream; in the bittersweet way she loved and remembered Rohan - all the while preferring Ithilien. It was a bitter thing that one of them must always live with an emptiness that could not be filled: Éowyn, if she had married Aragorn, and Aragorn if she hadn't. As it was, that emptiness lay in the king's heart, for Éowyn of Ithilien was full and happy and  _his_... Faramir's.

He kissed her, and she returned the kiss, pulling him closer to her still. Did Aragorn ever dream of this? Giving himself over to something always untamed, always passionate and fierce? Did Aragorn ever wish that his wife's face bore the lines, the evidence, of a life lived and enjoyed? Éowyn sighed and arched herself into him, and Faramir wondered if the king ever regretted not putting this bird in a cage.

Twenty-five years ago, he had given Minas Tirith to Aragorn. But he had come away with the prize - this White Lady in exchange for a White City, gold hair on his pillow in exchange for a gold crown on his head.

"Faramir," she murmured against his mouth, "I love you."

He saw his face in her eyes, heard his name on her lips, saw their past in her face. She was no portrait that he could pass in the hall and barely notice because it was always the same. She was fully real and fully flawed. She breathed and laughed and aged, while the stones in Minas Tirith rose immutably around their king.


End file.
